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Monday, February 15, 2010

Generating Revenue with Ads

If you've downloaded my R-Line app, you'll instantly notice the somewhat obnoxious banner advertisement at the bottom. Actually, it's not that bad, if you're lucky enough to see an add from a more mainstream advertiser. I've seen a few tasteful and well done ads from Netflix, Dish Network, and others. Some of the ring-tone advertisements are unfortunately very ugly.

It's been a week since I published the R-Line app and it's time to give a quick assessment of what I've seen with respect to ad revenue. I had level expectations moving into this project. The R-Line app has a very limited audience. It's limited to people in the Raleigh, NC area, those of whom ride the downtown circular bus. That's typically downtown workers, bar hoppers, and bus drivers.

So how much coin did I rake in? 14 cents.

Here's a frame of reference for the interested. There's been roughly 100 downloads, and 50 people who've kept the app installed. Each day there's an average of 35 ad impressions (how many times a new ad showed), and I have seen a total of 12 clicks. Not too exciting, is it?

I have had questions about the low rate of keepers. Why have so many been quick to uninstall? The ad data helps reveal some answers. It appears there's plenty of people in Singapore, United Kingdom, Russia, and all other the world downloading the app. But why!? It's English only, and clearly states that the app is specific to Raleigh, NC. Who knows, either way, I expect these are the uninstallers.

I'm going to post the shameless "donation" version of the application, without advertisements. Let's see what that does.